Main menu

Post navigation

Windows on the Fringe

I spotted this art installation by Astrid Jaekel on my wanderings around the massive cultural explosion that is the Edinburgh Festival and Fringe recently, the artworks placed into a series of windows in a building at the top of the curving descent of Victoria Street which leads down from George IV Bridge to the Grassmarket below the Castle.

When I stopped to enjoy them and look more closely I couldn’t help but think that these pictures with texts in each window were like a sequential graphical story, basically a short comic strip but one placed on architecture rather than on paper, with window frames rather than inked borders, a comic strip about city life being told right on one of the city’s buildings. I was quite taken with it, so had to stop and take a picture of each and share them on here with you, certainly made me pause and smile. On the artist’s site Astrid explains that the older inhabitants are leaning out of their windows looking – often disapprovingly – at the revellers of the Festival. Astrid also advises passing by after dark (which tends to be rather late in Scotland at this time of year) when it is illuminated from within, making it look as if the building’s older residents are keeping an eye on the boisterous Fringe goers as they go from venue to venue, doubtless with several pub stops between shows… (pics from my Flickr, the art is (c) Astrid Jaekel, click to see the larger versions):